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Linda McCartney : The Woman At Paul’s SideBy PAT SWINGLEY The slim, fragile-looking blond woman sat close beside her celebrated husband on the porch as he feiled (sic) questions from the press, occasionally breaking in with her own viewpoints. It was a hot Wednesday afternoon and 24 hours later, the two, Paul and Linda McCartney and their three children will have packed their 30 pieces of luggage, including music equipment and new motorcycle, into a trailer hooked to the back of a rented car and left for New York. "I love the South," she said looking out over the heads of reporters, across the 133-acre farm in Wilson County they rented from songwriter Curly Putnam. In a Yankee-British accent that bespeaks both her Scarsdale, N.Y., raising and her life as the wife of a former Beatle, she added, "We’ve never been to South America (sic) before. I’m glad we came. The people are so friendly." During their six-weeks stay in Middle Tennessee she had teasing added a southern mixture to her speech by bidding a "Good bye, y’all" to anyone she talked with. The McCartneys like the countryside for living. They have a 600-acre hill farm in Argyllshire, Scotland, that has 300 sheep on it which she says, "We use them for wool, not eating." One of their requests before coming to Nashville was for a farm within 50 miles of Nashville that included horses and swimming facilities. The arrangements were made through Buddy Killen, executive vice-president of Tree International, which is a client of Linda’s father, prominent New York lawyer Lee Eastman. Putnam, a writer for Tree, agreed to rent his farm for $2,000 a week to the McCartneys and their Wings band. Curly and his wife, Bernice, went to Hawaii on a vacation and "just floated around most of the time," according to Kiillen (sic). Several horses were provided for the family since, Linda, an expert horsewoman having won her first championship at age six in the Madison Square Garden and her eldest daughter, Heather, 11, like to ride. They used the six-acre lake on the property for swimming and during their visit, their middle daughter, Mary, almost five, learned to swim. Linda Eastman McCartney was born of wealth (no relation to the Kodak Eastmans), in a family that included four children, three girls and a boy. She says now, ‘I’m not much into materialism anymore. I went through that phase where I liked big houses and Thunderbirds, all that. Now, give me a horse, a log cabin and I’m happy. In Scotland, she said, they live in a three-room stone house. "It has two bedrooms and a kitchen. The three kids sleep in one room. They also have a similar arrangement in their house in London. Sitting barefoot on the porch at the Putnam home, she also talked about her shopping trip to Rivergate and Nashville stores she had taken with Tree secretary Dixie Campbell and Donna Hilley, personal secretary to Killen and Jack Stapp, the publishing company’s president. At Rivergate she had bought a lighter for Paul’s 32nd birthday and looked for sandals – unsuccsessfully (sic) because they all had too much leather and wouldn’t let her feet breathe. She also bought Heather a poster of horses and the two younger girls broomstick horses. "I never spend too much money," she said. "I never see enough things that I want to spend money on." However, in other shopping trips, she has bought several dresses, skirts and shirts, all in size 10 for herself, but no slacks because "I don’t fancy pants." She also purchased several western shirts for her husband. Born in September, 1941, Linda was graduated from Scarsdale High School and went to the University of Tucson. Her first marriage was to Melvin See, a geologist, who she said "went to Princeton. He was a sort of Hemmingway fellow." Heather was born during the marriage and has been legally adopted by McCartney. After the breakup of the marriage she went back to Tucson with Heather where she said, "I loved it. I was living again." Through a friend, Nina Hill, she was influenced to take a course in photography. "It was a night course, a history of photography sort of course, about the artists’ lives. But each student would take pictures and then we’d critique them in class." When she moved back to New York, she went to work as a receptionist for a magazine. She was given an assignment to photograph the Rolling Stones which gained her some notoriety and she decided to become a free-lance photographer. She worked for Time, Life, and the Sunday New York Times and while on assignment in London for Town and Country she met Paul McCartney at the Bag O’ Nails pub in London. "We saw each other for about every six months, in New York or London. We lived together for half a year then decided to get married, I had gone over for a three-week visit and stayed," she said. They lead a "very ordinary life," now, she claims, but "it’s hectic. We do a lot of traveling and there’s a lot of packing, but it’s all right. I like my roots, but we take the kids. Because of the laws, we can’t take our dogs out of the country." Back in Scotland, they have an old English sheep-dog, a Dalmatian, a puppy that’s a product of the two and a golden Labrador plus six horses. She does her own cooking, although she says, "Before I was married, I could live very well on ice cream and Chinese noodles." A specialty that Paul and the kids like is her Crème of Tomato Soup that serves six to eight people. Take 10 ripe home-grown tomatoes, four large onions peeled and quartered and four pieces of celery. Put in sauce pan with 1 ½ cups water and cook until soft. In another pan, put a ¼ butter, ½ cup plain flour, ¼ cup milk and a pint and half of crème and stir to thicken (add more flour if needed). Add salt and cracked pepper to taste. Strain tomato mixture and combine. Add croutons if you want. Among items they requested for their stay here was an electric orange squeezer-juicer because the family likes fresh orange juice each morning. Some other requests included 31 flavors of ice cream, Dannon blueberry yogurt., raw sugar, smoked bacon, fresh blueberries, ripe watermelons, various cheeses, 100% maple syrup and pears soap, for which Mrs. Hilley in shopping had to substitute Amino Pon soap. Linda says she hates to cook meat, but does so because the family likes it. "I was a vegetarian for two and a half years, but I have a husband who is the sort who craves his bacon." Heather, like her mother, also likes to cook and "makes great eggs and chips." For a while, Heather was sporting a burned place on her chin from examining too closely a fudge pound cake she had made. The youngest child, Stella, almost three, still in the stages of being toilet-trained, gained a reputation for heeding the call of nature wherever she might be and discarding her panties. She was scolded by her father while on a visit to the Tree offices for such activity with, "Stella, you’ve just embarrassed us in front of the whole Tree staff." During their visit here, the couple, now married six years, was observed as being very "romantic" and holding hands a lot. "They have a tremendous association with each other," said Killen. "They really believe in togetherness." Stapp described Linda as a "very warm and friendly person, who showed a lot of concern and consideration for people." He said they were both well-knowledged on "current events and books." Linda is working on a book on photography and has been approached by several publishers for it. She expects about six more months of work on it before it will be finished. She says she prefers to photograph faces of older people and children, animals and flowers. In McCartney’s group she sings harmony as well as playing the piano, Moog synthesizer and melotron, which was on their list of requests while here, but none were available locally and the cost of transporting one here was too expensive. But, she says, "I’m not very interested in a career of my own. I was a professional photographer before I got married and I don’t care much about a career any more." Her photographs are mostly for personal enjoyment and her husband’s albums and interviews. Taken from The Tennessean July 21, 1974 page 1-E. Continued on page 11-E under headline "The Woman At Paul’s Side."
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